


Funny Place to Wear Pearls

by Lily (alyelle)



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 15:59:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyelle/pseuds/Lily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't get to the age of 900 without acquiring a few strange fetishes along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Funny Place to Wear Pearls

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to [](http://lounge-lily.livejournal.com/profile)[**lounge_lily**](http://lounge-lily.livejournal.com/) for her beta work and endless discussions when i was stuck for a particular word. Written for Tess' ([](http://mihane-echo.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://mihane-echo.livejournal.com/)**mihane_echo**'s) birthday. She knows it's late, but i'm still sorry. All my love sweetheart. You're a wonderful friend and i hope this does your prompt justice. ♥
> 
> [Also archived on [dreamwidth](http://stowaway.dreamwidth.org/3493.html)]

 

"What?"

"What?"

"What was that? 'Or Time Lords'. What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well..." he drew the word out in that annoying way that she knew meant he was stalling for time. "Nothing really. Just that we're decent men too."

Donna narrowed her eyes at him. "You're not a man, mate, you're an _alien_. Remember?"

He looked at her, brow furrowed, and said in a slightly stricken voice, "I'm still decent though."

"S'pose so." She clucked her tongue briefly, her eyes moving back to Roger and Davenport. The Doctor was mumbling under his breath; no words that she could make out, but she suspected they contained a fair bit of balm for his wounded vanity.

It was actually starting to get tiresome, all this business about being mates and not wanting things to be complicated, then turning around and dropping lines like that on every second planet they arrived on. Not to mention the little squeeze he'd given her as they'd walked into Lady Eddison's garden, just a tiny bit too low and too long to have been properly friendly. She was just about to turn back and demand some form of explanation for the ever-frequent innuendo when a voice interrupted her.

"And now a lady who needs no introduction!"

A blonde woman in a blue dress stepped elegantly across the lawn, the faintest of blushes pinking her cheeks. Hushing Lady Eddison, she extended a perfectly manicured hand toward where Donna and the Doctor stood.

"Agatha Christie."

Any thoughts of torment instantly fled Donna's mind. Her eyes widened and she stole a quick glance at the Doctor; his were the same and he was grinning from ear to ear, babbling way too quickly for her to follow. Agatha's reply, however, she heard all too clearly.

"You two make a rather unusual couple."

_Blimey, here we go again._ She shook her head. "We're not a couple," she began, just as the Doctor said, "Oh no, we're not married."

"Well obviously not," Agatha smiled. "No wedding ring."

Unable to help herself, Donna let her eyes flick to the finger that had worn, for a very brief time, a shining gold band. Heat pricked her cheeks, and she made herself look away, forcing the memory of who had given her that ring back down to the bottom of her mind as she mentally prepared to roll her eyes and laugh with him the way they always did.

Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of him also gazing at his ring finger, or the sheepish grin he gave her when their eyes met. Her stomach dropped about fifteen feet as Agatha spoke again and his eyes upped their iridescent sparkling, still fixed on her own.

He fancied her. A nine-hundred-and-something year old alien _fancied_ her. And judging by the rubbish job he was doing of hiding it, he probably wanted her to know.

_Bloody hell,_ she thought to herself, twisting her fingers in the long pearly necklace that hung down her front.

*

 

"Genetically re... You mean, the murderer's an alien."

He nodded. "Which means one of that lot," he turned to look at her, his face so close that their noses almost touched, and she just about lost his next words to the sudden rush of butterflies through her chest and out the top of her head, "is an alien in human form."

He jumped up and she shook her head, trying desperately to jolt it from the track of how velvety his eyes looked up close. Assuming they weren't clubbed to death the latest homicidal monster and his blunt instrument, she could worry about that another time. She forced herself to think about the here and now. Body. Library. Award-winning (but not yet) novelist.

"Oi, think about it," she said, eyebrows knitted. "There's a murder, a mystery, and Agatha Christie."

"So? Happens to me all the time." He shoved the stick with the residue he'd found under her nose and she recoiled. Unable to watch him taste the sticky stuff – and she knew he would, he did it with everything; it'd get him in a right mess one of these days – she gazed about the room.

"No, but isn't that a bit weird? Agatha Christie didn't walk around surrounded by murders, not really. I mean that's like meeting Charles Dickens and he's surrounded by ghosts. At _Christmas_."

"Well..." Dragging out his vowels again.

_Pull the other one, mate._ "Oh, come on. It's not like we could drive across country and find Enid Blyton having tea with Noddy. Could we? Noddy's not real. Is he? Tell me there's no Noddy!"

His eyes met hers again, wide and manic, and he took her hands in his. For a split second, she was absolutely convinced he was going to tell her otherwise.

"There's no Noddy."

And then he was gone, bounding out the door and leaving her with a pulse that was entirely too fast for her liking.

"I'll Noddy you if you're not careful," Donna muttered under her breath as she followed him. "And it won't be pleasant."

He was at the foot of the stairs when she caught up with him, blithering like an idiot in front of Agatha again. "Agatha and I will question the suspects. Donna, you can search the bedrooms."

And wasn't that just like him, to leave her the boring job. She opened her mouth to suggest that maybe he should do the searching, since she was hardly likely to know what leftover morphic residue looked like, when he whipped a large glass _thing_ from his inner pocket. "You'll need this."

"Is that for real?" She glared at it, sure it must have been a film prop. No one possibly needed a magnifying glass that big.

"Go on," he said, that look that was halfway between teasing and pleading on his face. "You're ever so plucky." He turned back to the novelist, flashing a mile wide grin.

She snatched the glass from his hand, gritted her teeth and stomped up the stairs. By the time she'd reached the top, she'd almost convinced herself that the sudden anger singing in her blood had nothing to do with jealousy, that Agatha's beautifully clear eyes and long willowy fingers didn't threaten her in the slightest.

 

*

 

It was absolutely typical, Donna thought, as she turned corner after corner, tracking down bedrooms. She could come all the way to 1926, dress the part to perfection and still have to deal with extraterrestrial lifeforms. And as if a psychopathic extraterrestrial wasn't enough, she now had an extraterrestrial who gave all the signs of being interested in her, and for more than her rapier wit.

Or had given at any rate. Now he was so caught up in what was going on – not to mention his sudden need to impress the celebrity guest – that he hardly gave her a second glance. Well, there was the blissfully innocent expression he kept plastering on, like he had every right to be up close and personal with her, and of course he meant nothing by it. It wasn't fooling her in the slightest. She knew the difference between him looking innocent and actually being innocent; the latter was far less frequent. But if not for that, and how close he kept positioning himself to her, all that nose-bumping and hand-holding and lambent chocolate eyes, wide-eyed and gazing into hers, she'd almost believe she'd been making the whole thing up.

But that wasn't right. He fancied her, not the other way around. He must do. She wasn't the one making doe eyes and pointed comments about how 'decent' she was.

_And if you're so uninterested,_ said the nagging voice in the back of her head, _why are you so bothered by it?_

"Oh, sod off," she muttered.

Turning into yet another corridor, she tried the next door she came across. Locked.

"S'funny," she said to herself. "None of the others were." She turned the knob again, glad for something else to puzzle over, but the door didn't budge.

"Ahem."

A short squeal escaped as she turned. The butler stood behind her, grave and silent and creepy as all get out.

"You won't find anything in there."

"How come it's locked?" she snapped, her earlier frustration colouring her tone.

"Lady Eddison commands it to be so."

"And I command it to be otherwise."

 

*

 

"I appreciate you trying to be kind." Agatha looked up from her lap briefly; the bright-eyed detective who had stood in the sitting room five minutes ago interrogating suspects was gone, replaced by a woman whose sorrow and self-recrimination were written all too clearly on her face. "But you're right. These murders are like my own creations. It's as though someone's mocking me, and I've had enough scorn for one lifetime."

Sudden empathy stabbed at Donna's heart, as she remembered how worries of her own uselessness had plagued her all day, flittering about her head like summer mosquitoes. The Doctor might not be able to spare a second glance for her while one of the greatest authors of their time was in the room, but she knew deep down that it didn't mean he thought any less of her. If his surreptitious glances of the past few weeks were anything to go by, he thought rather more of her than she'd ever wanted him to. And if he was trying to forget that now, who could blame him? She was the one who'd thrown a fit about long streaks of alien nothing. Agatha Christie wasn't responsible for Donna's inner turmoil, Donna Noble was.

"I had this bloke once." She wasn't sure what prompted her to say it, but Agatha's eyes narrowed slightly, the same way they had when she was puzzling over the wasp-sting in the bedroom, and she continued. "I was engaged, and I loved him, I really did. Turns out he was lying through his teeth. But d'you know what? I moved on. I was lucky, I found the Doctor." Donna felt her heart thump heavily as she said his name, and added softly, "He's changed my life." That much at least was true.

"I see. Is my marriage the stuff of gossip now?" Whatever interest Donna had peaked was gone, shut off behind eyes that were suddenly icy. Self-protection. She knew that look. She couldn't fault her for it.

"I just... Sorry."

It was Agatha's turn to sigh now. "No matter. The stories are true. I found my husband with another woman. A younger, prettier woman, isn't it always the way?"

Donna grimaced slightly; that sentiment was a little too close to how she'd felt standing at the foot of a staircase with an oversized magnifier in her hand. Half-distracted and furious with herself for not letting this go, she continued her reassurances on autopilot until Agatha interrupted.

"Hello, what's that? Those flowerbeds were perfectly neat earlier, now some of the stalks are bent over." She jumped out of the swing and bent to pluck a small wooden case from the garden bed.

"There you go, who'd ever notice that? You're brilliant!" His word, she thought instantly, and felt like slapping herself. _For God's sake, Donna, get a grip. More important things to worry about just now._

She smiled brightly, as though she was about as far from an internal crisis over a paper-thin (but not necessarily unattractive, now that she thought about it) alien as any one person could possibly be. "I think I know someone who might want a look at that."

A small smile gradually worked its way across Agatha's face. "I think you might be right."

 

*

 

He was still in the sitting room, and Donna thrust the case into his hands with a flourish as Agatha explained how she'd found it. His glasses were on almost instantly, and Donna watched, satisfied that they were finally getting somewhere, as he peered at the case from one angle then another. For a moment, everything was normal; she forgot the nervous churning in her stomach, the overly rapid pulse and way her breath hitched whenever he looked at her. For a moment, she was just Donna again, who travelled with her best mate and got chased by aliens at every available opportunity.

"Aha!" He inserted a thin wire into one side of the case and it popped open, revealing a set of shining silver instruments. Plucking his glasses off, he slipped them back into his pocket and slowly lifted out tray after small velvet tray, all of them full. "Someone came here tooled up. The sort of stuff a thief would use."

"The Unicorn? He's here?"

The Doctor's muttered reply was interrupted as the butler appeared in the doorway. "Your drinks ladies, Doctor."

"Very good, Greeves." The Doctor's eyes barely moved from the toolkit on the table, but Donna tracked him as he silently left.

"Dead weird, that one." She switched her gaze back to the Doctor. "How about that science stuff, what'd you find?"

"Vespiform sting. Vespiform have got hives in the Silfrax Galaxy. But for some reason, this one's behaving like a character in one of your books." He looked at Agatha intently over the rim of his glass. Donna followed suit, thankful once again that the mystery left her unable to appreciate the way his lips pursed over the tumbler as he sipped, full and ever so slightly rosy, or the floppy quality his fringe had taken on.

Well. Almost unable.

"Come on, Agatha," she said, her brain mouthing _Come on, Donna_ in chorus, "what would Miss Marple do? She'd have overheard something vital by now, because the murderer thinks she's just a harmless old lady."

Agatha's eyes lit up. "Clever idea! Miss Marple, who writes those?"

She'd done it again. Wonderful. "Ah, copyright Donna Noble. Add it to the list."

"Donna."

She knew without looking what expression he'd be wearing. "Okay, fine, we could split the copyright."

"No, Donna, something's inhibiting my enzymes." His voice was strained, and when she turned to look, he was gripping the arms of the chair with both hands, his face ghastly white and coated in a thin sheen of sweat. A dreadful moan escaped his lips as his body convulsed suddenly. "I've been poisoned!"

The next few minutes passed in a blur, words like 'cyanide' and 'fatal' and 'stimulate the inhibited enzymes' whizzing by her ears, and suddenly they were in the kitchen, the Doctor dripping ginger beer all over the floor while she and Agatha frantically grabbed at containers from every shelf and bench they could see.

"What do you need, Doctor?" Agatha cried.

"Salt! I need something salty!"

"Here!" Donna shoved a brown bag at him.

"What is it?

"Salt."

"Too salty."

"Ooooh, too salty." Under any other circumstance, she'd have thrown it at him. As it was, she nearly collided with Agatha, who was thrusting a large glass jar into his hands, in her hurry to find something else.

"What about this?"

He flicked the lid off and tipped it up to his mouth, chewing frantically.

"What's that?" Donna raised an eyebrow at her.

"Anchovies."

He was waving at her again, spirit finger hand gestures, and she felt herself start to panic. Surely if he could fix this himself he'd have done so by now. His face was getting paler and paler.

"What is it?" she cried shrilly. "A song? Mammy! Oh, I don't know... Camptown Races!"

"_Camptown Races_?"

"All right then, Towering Inferno. How 'bout you _tell_ us if you can talk?"

"It's a shock! Look, a shock, see? I need a shock!"

He was still waving frantically and she heard her own reply from a long way away. "Okay. Big shock, coming up."

His lips were soft and yielding beneath hers, but definitely not unresponsive. She could feel his hearts skittering under her palms and she pulled more tightly on his collar, unwilling to let go now that she'd started. The anchovy-walnut-ginger combination was disgusting but there was something underneath that wasn't quite mint and wasn't quite lavender, yet somehow reminded her of both just the same. If she was entirely honest with herself, she'd rather like to explore it later without the horrid overtones of fish and nuts.

And then he was gone, gasping heavily and breathing out a Dementor or Nazgul or some other fantasy special effect, leaving her on somewhat shaky legs, desperate to regain her own breath.

"Mmmmah! Detox!" He rubbed his face with the back of his hand. "Must do that more often."

She felt her breath catch in her throat and swallowed hard. She knew he'd noticed too, because his eyes matched her own for owlishness and he stammered hurriedly, "I mean, the, er, the detox."

She couldn't speak, couldn't for the life of her think of where to begin for a witty retort. Instead she turned and walked as quickly as she could without actually running from the kitchen, leaving Agatha, the Doctor and a gaggle of stunned servants in her wake.

 

*

 

He peered cautiously around the corner of the doorway, for once looking quite lost for words. "May I?"

Donna waved him in. He sat down gingerly at the opposite end of the daybed she was leaning against and she glanced at him sideways. "I'm sorry," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. It was one of his mannerisms, just another thing that had worked its way into her life without her noticing.

"Sorry?"

"Yeah. For..." she gestured vaguely to the air, unable to think of a decent way to phrase it. Because, when you got right down to it, she wasn't sorry. Not that she'd kissed him, although that's what she hoped he'd believe, and not that she knew he fancied her. Not even that she thought she might just fancy him back, given the right situation. _Or any situation_, her mind whispered treacherously.

"Please don't be." He leaned forward slightly then backed away, as though he'd intended to take her hands but thought better of it at the last second. "If anyone should be sorry, it should be me."

"Why?" Donna looked up sharply, frowning in confusion, and her chest clenched painfully when he flinched away.

"Because I..." His cheeks flushed suddenly and he waved his own hand around, even more vaguely than she had. Kicked-puppy eyes pleaded silently with hers. "I mean, you never... I've made a right mess of things."

She studied him for a moment, the image of his reply to Agatha painfully clear in her memory. _We're not married._ Not 'we're not a couple', even though no-one had mentioned anything about marriage. She saw his smile once more, decidedly shy for all that it was cheeky; she saw any number of times that he'd denied they were together, always with a quick look at her as he spoke.

"It's okay," she said softly, tentatively resting her fingertips on his knee. 'I know' hung between them, unspoken and unnecessary.

"You're not angry?" His turn to be confused.

"No. Bit shocked when I realised, maybe, but not angry. Why should I be?"

He looked down at his hands fretfully. "We said just mates," he mumbled. She laughed gently, and some of the tension in the air dissipated at the sound.

"Last time I checked, we were both adults. Or one of us was, at any rate."

"Hey!"

"Well, I can't speak for blokes from Gallifrey, but on Earth, adults are allowed to change their minds about things."

He looked up, his eyes guarded and dark and hopeful all at once. "Change their..."

"Oh, for goodness sake, you great prawn. Yes. As in, yes, I may have changed my mind slightly and no, we don't have to be 'just mates'." He continued staring silently, and she felt her hammering pulse skip a little. "I mean, unless you want to be. Because - "

The end of her sentence was cut off by his mouth, soft and warm on hers, and his hands working their way into the back of her hair. She surrendered for a moment before pulling back gently, keeping her arms around his neck. Even with that obvious gesture his brow furrowed and a wash of sorrow coloured his eyes.

"Hey," she murmured. "Settle. You can continue that later, yeah? We've got an alien wasp to deal with first. And," she pushed herself back upright, "you'll ruin my hair."

He grinned. "Donna Noble, ever the practical one."

"Didn't get like this by itself, mate. I'll have you know it took longer to get this 'do right than to find a suitable dress in that oversized wardrobe of yours." She patted it carefully, making sure the pins were still in place. "Besides, you still taste like bloody anchovies."

His laugh rang through the room and she couldn't help but smile through the face she pulled. "I'm serious. It's disgusting. The only way you could have made that combination any worse would have been by adding pepper."

His laughter stopped as suddenly as it began. He cocked his head to one side, looking at her curiously, then clapped his hands loudly together. "Yes! _Pepper_! Oh, Donna, you're brilliant, you are."

He scooped her up, pressed a loud kiss to her forehead and was out of the room before she had time to sit back down on the daybed and wonder what on earth he'd just thought of. Her fingers absently crept up to brush the center of her forehead, then across her lips, and she felt the beginnings of a smile on her face. "Stop it," she said out loud, as though it would have an effect. It only made the grin wider. She shook her head slowly, as much at herself as at his manic antics of the minute before. She didn't quite know when she'd stopped thinking of him as a streak of nothing, or when she'd decided that maybe just mates wasn't the best thing they could be. She didn't really think it mattered much. He was crazy about her, and just now that was alright by her.

"Silly Spaceman," she muttered, getting up to find where he'd gone haring off to.

 

*

 

They stood silently, watching Agatha walk up the stairs to the Harrogate Hotel.

"Are you sure she'll be alright?" Donna asked quietly.

"Oh, yeah. She had a great life. Met another man, married again. Saw the world. Wrote and wrote and wrote." He was smiling, but she couldn't help feeling a prick of sadness as the memory of Agatha on Lady Eddison's swing came back to her.

"She never thought her books were any good, though. And she must have spent all those years wondering."

The Doctor turned, gently pushing open the door of the TARDIS and shrugging out of his coat. "Thing is, I don't think she ever quite forgot. Great mind like that, some of the details kept bleeding through. All the stuff her imagination could use. Like Miss Marple!" He knelt down in a corner of the console room and hefted a piece of grating up from the floor. "And - where is it? Hold on..."

Donna sat beside him, watching him pull one thing after another out of a wooden chest, ticking them off as he tossed them aside: "Cybermen, Carrionites and... Ha! Christie, Agatha." He handed her a book: paperback, battered corners and a giant black-and-yellow wasp adorning the cover.

"She did remember!"

He nodded. "Somewhere in the back of her mind, it all lingered. And that's not all. Look at the copyright page."

"Facsimile edition, published in the year five _billion_?"

"People never stop reading them. She's the best selling novelist of all time."

Donna sighed heavily. "But she never knew. That's so sad."

"Well, no one knows how they're going to be remembered. All we can do is hope for the best."

Donna's free hand found its way to the necklace she still wore and she began absently twining her fingers into the long rope of pearls. "I can't imagine being remembered like that though," she breathed. "That's incredible."

He gently took the book from her and placed it back in the crate, closing it with a soft snap. "She was incredible. And so, for that matter, are you." His arms slipped around her waist, pulling her towards him. "Now, since I no longer taste like anchovies," he licked his lips for emphasis, "how about that kiss you promised me?"

"I didn't promise anything, Spaceman," she smirked. "But..." She smoothed her hands over the lapels of his shirt and allowed them to continue upwards, ghosting them over the back of his neck as she arched up to meet him. Her kiss was deliberately slow, soft and lingering, and she felt his eyelashes flutter against her skin. He was right; the anchovies were entirely gone. Her tongue caught delicate traces of mint and lavender, pure this time, as he deepened the kiss and she breathed him in, relaxing into his embrace. One arm wrapped around her waist, the other crept up her back, his long fingers working their way into her tightly pinned curls and tugging them loose, twisting themselves alternately in ginger spirals and the shimmering beads that lay across the back of her neck.

"Got a thing about pearls, don't you?"

"Might do." He pulled back and raised an eyebrow at her. "Why do you ask?"

"You had that same look on your face when Lady Eddison said about Lady Babbington's pearls. 'Snatched right from under her nose!'" she mimicked in a posh accent, one hand over her heart and a horrified expression on her face.

"Funny place to wear pearls," he frowned, and she whacked his arm lightly, laughing.

"Oi, you."

"What? It was adorable. I wouldn't mind seeing you with a rope of pearls under your nose, actually."

"Why on _earth_ would I have them there?"

"Oh, I don't know." He waggled his eyebrows again. "I'm sure I can think of many ways that pearls might end up under your nose. Or - " he broke off, dipping her quickly backwards over the arm still wrapped around her waist, smiling down at her as she squealed. "Draped across your cheek," he finished, lifting her back up and gently plucking at the necklace that had indeed fallen across her cheek and hooked itself over one ear.

"I see," she murmured, trying not to sound as breathless as she felt. "So these pearls then – anything else you might like to see them with?"

"Well... I rather thought they might look nice on their own."

"In that case, Doctor," she took his hand in hers, "you better come with me."

 

  


_fin._  



End file.
